Texas college students hijack drone aircraft

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What’s that in the sky? It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a unmanned military drone that’s been hijacked by a group of college students? Yes, some smart young folks from the University of Texas at Austin managed to take control of an aerial drone’s course, and disturbingly, it was really easy to do.

Mind you that this was not some kind of fly-by-night operation. The students were asked by the Department of Homeland security to do their best to gain control of the drone (which is technically university property). It turns out that all they needed was about $1000 worth of equipment to seize control of a multi-million dollar piece of technology often deployed by the military.

The government became concerned about the vulnerability of drone aircraft after it became apparent that Iran had most likely taken control of a US drone and crashed it in Iranian territory several months ago. The Austin students, led by professor Todd Humphreys, used the high-end GPS equipment to spoof the GPS signal being sent to the drone. Spoofing the signal means the students were able to trick the drone into mistaking their signal for the real one. This allowed them to lead the drone astray quite easily. The aircraft being used employs the same unencrypted GPS signals that the government vehicles do.

This hack presents a serious problem for proponents of the domestic use of drones. If anyone with $1000 and a little know-how can crash a drone into things, that’s just not safe. It is currently illegal to use drone aircraft in US airspace without special clearance from the FAA, and it might take a little longer than expected for that to change.